Kazusou Aoki

Kazusou Aoki, better known as Kazu, is one of the main characters of After the End. He is a transfer student from Tokyo who gets involved in Joss' group after he accidentally kills the blob IOI.

Appearance
Kazu is a young boy who is described as short, with light purple hair and darker eyes. He is skinny, described by Tegan as looking like "a meth addict" who could "start crying any second". He is also said to be wearing a dark hoodie and baggy pants. Under his hoodie, he has three small horn nubs.

Personality
Kazu is quiet and seems to easily get emotional. While he may seem gullible and naive at first, he is actually quite clever, trying to escape from some bullies who were harassing him by claiming that his salamander was in his locker.

Kazu is also very friendly and caring, being noticeably traumatized by the death of IOI.

Kazu loves his pet salamander, Bonfire ("Bon" for short), and will take any opportunity to talk about it.

Story
Kazu is a transfer student from Tokyo, who came to school on Saturday, August 24th in order to "get his feet wet" with the American school system. He met Stephanie Tegan on that day (who was, for reasons she couldn't fully explain, uncomfortable around him), and showed her his pet salamander. He also tried to break the ice with the popular kids, but he was put off by their hivemind-like movements (a sign for the kid to stay away from them), so he decided to follow Tegan's advice and to not hang out with that sort of company.

After the end of the day though, the leader of the rich kids comes and starts harassing Kazu (and later Tegan, who also got harassed and beaten up by the kids). When the bullies pull out Kazu's hoodie they see his horns and call him "Korna" (it is implied that this is a derogatory term to horned people).

Kazu gets thrown in the school's basement, and when he wakes up he freaks out for a moment before IOI comes and calms him down by touching his hand and turning into a man.

IOI is soon killed by Kazu accidentally, after the former was being protected by the blue blob. Kazu feels immense guilt for the death of the creature, and decides he wants to avenge it.

In Chapter 7, he has an urn filled with IOI's remains (although it's never shown what he does with the ashes once Blackpink dies). After having a conversation with IOI's ghost, he officially joins the group to avenge IOI, initially only joining with Tegan before she gets Chevelle, Joss, and Kyrianos to come along as well.

Trivia

 * Kazu's physical appearance and name are similar to Kars.
 * There may be less superficial connections between the two, as Wamuu refers to him as "my lord" and mentions that Kazu knows him when they speak in Chapter 7.